Family seeks answers to graveyard mystery

This story begins way back in 1930, when a man named Benjamin Nichols bought a 10-by-20-foot plot in the Greenbush Cemetery for $75 and buried his wife, Ethel.
Benjamin’s burial followed in 1937, but it was 21 years before the next grave was dug for a young granddaughter in 1958. Burials of three other relatives followed in the 1960s, and another 36 years passed before Benjamin’s daughter-in-law, Mary Nichols, was interred in 2003.

In all, seven members of the Nichols clan are believed to be buried in six unmarked grave locations ­in the cemetery on Routes 9 & 20 in East Greenbush. (Two baby girls who died in 1958 and 1961 are assumed to share one spot.)
But now, an unreliable collection of records and a lack of operating funds has helped fuel a storm of conflict and ill will between Nichols relatives, who wish to place a marker on the family plot, and members of an inexperienced volunteer board who took over stewardship of the 18-acre graveyard in March.
Some digging has only added to the uncertainty.
Only one of four vaults — the concrete or metal casings that surround caskets — found on the lot is marked with a name, Mary Nichols. A grave initially thought to be Benjamin’s is located across a disputed boundary line for a neighboring lot that is marked with a stone for a family named “Wicks.” The dimensions of the lot are less than the original size sold to Benjamin in 1930, and the numbers assigned to the graves on burial permits, when known, are inconsistent and sometimes inaccurate.
In recent weeks, tempers have flared and harsh words have been exchanged between the cemetery officials and Nichols relatives.
Some Nichols family members now say there should be exhumation of the whole plot and DNA testing, if necessary, at the expense of the cemetery to determine who is buried where. Based on a suggestion they say came from a cemetery volunteer, they also were under the impression at one point that the Wicks stone was improperly placed on the Nichols lot and could be moved.
The Nicholses believe there’s room to doubt whether any of the graves on or near the lot, aside from Mary’s because it is so recent and marked, are actually those of their relatives — and if it is the right lot, they still wonder which graves belong to whom?
They’ve reached at least one conclusion that cemetery officials do not dispute: the grave of Benjamin, the patriarch, is missing.
Roberta Reno, a retired state worker who serves as president of the cemetery board, sounded exasperated when I contacted her to discuss the Nichols family’s gripes.
“We are trying to the best of our ability to take care of this, but the family has not been very kind to us,” she said. “We are volunteers. We took over the cemetery in March. It was about to be abandoned. Is there room for error? Of course. Everybody’s human. We are not trying to hide anything. It’s a learning process, and we are trying to do the right thing.”
Reno is unsure that it’s even possible to locate Benjamin with certainty.
“We cannot just move headstones. We cannot uncover graves without permission,” she said. “Where is Benjamin? Could he still be there? Could the coffin have deteriorated? We don’t know.”
This thicket of questions came about, in large part, because of the fond memories of a woman only distantly related to Benjamin Nichols.
Diane Fontanelli is the niece of Ann Marie Fontanelli Nichols, the mother of the two baby girls buried at Greenbush, who was buried there in 1967. Ann Marie was the first wife of Harold Nichols Jr., a grandson of Benjamin, who now is among the family members looking for answers.
As a teenager in 1968, Diane and the man who now is her husband went to the cemetery looking for Ann Marie’s grave and were directed by a caretaker to a spot where she placed a white-painted stone to honor her favorite aunt. The rock eventually was removed from the spot, which Diane says was far from the location now considered the Nichols plot.
“I don’t know what pushed me to think about this last summer,” Diane recalls. “I said ‘I have to go there.’”
She wanted to place a permanent marker on the grave, and as a result of those inquiries, Diane has now reconnected with the Nichols family after more than 40 years out of contact. Grown sons of Ann Marie and Harold Jr. are her cousins.
I met Harold Jr., his current wife, Marcia, and his sister, Beverly Nichols Tomisman, at the Tomisman home in Rensselaer, along with Diane and her husband, Harold LaMountain. LaMountain, regarded as the most even-tempered of the group, has taken on a role as chief communicator for the extended family.
“I’m not saying it’s their fault,” LaMountain said of the cemetery officials, “but we still want to find our loved ones.”
Cemetery officials and members of the Nichols family have been working with an investigator from the state Division of Cemeteries, which is part of the Department of State, in an effort to sort out the mess. A State Department spokesman did not respond to my messages asking about the Greenbush cemetery and about rules governing the state’s many non-profit cemeteries.
Cemetery officials have offered the family two free grave sites in another section of the cemetery to try to make up for the short-changing on the original lot, but that’s not what the Nichols family wants.
I learned a lot from a conversation about the situation Friday with JoAnne Ryan, who is second vice president of the New York State Association of Cemeteries and director of the Cemetery of the Highlands in Orange County.
She said it’s not uncommon for some graves to remain unmarked, especially those dating to the Depression Era, when Benjamin Nichols and his wife died. Temporary markers can help, she said, but even those can rust away, so reliable maps and records are essential.
Ryan sympathized with the frustrations of the Nichols family and the Greenbush Cemetery officials about the poor state of old documentation. “Records were kept on pieces of paper and old notebooks. That’s what they did,” she said.
Ryan said she gained clarity regarding a poorly documented portion of Highlands with some help from a Boy Scout doing an Eagle Scout project, and the cemetery relies extensively on a probing tool when working to confirm grave locations, rather than digging up sites.
She volunteered to contact Reno and offer assistance.
“Being a new cemetery board, they probably don’t have much experience locating graves,” Ryan said. “I feel for the family. I feel for the cemetery. Unfortunately, this new board has inherited a mess.”